Content Syndication with RSS

LinkpimpClient.pl

LinkpimpClient.pl deals with the majority of the tasks needed for this system. Although feeds can be PubSub-enabled via XML-RPC, SOAP, HTTP POST, or not at all, and while for completeness we should be able to deal with all of these situations to make a Publish and Subscribe system fully spec-compliant, XML-RPC is the only system being used at the moment and the only one we will discuss here.

So, onward! Example 12-1 shows the entire program listing, but first let’s step through the interesting bits to illustrate a few points.

After setting up the necessary variables and loading the modules, we get to the section of the program that deals with the current subscriptions. When the program is run for the first time, this section is irrelevant, but since we’ll probably run this script every hour from cron, it soon becomes necessary. Subscriptions last for 25 hours, so we need to make sure they are renewed in time.

logger ("\n Program started. Let's go!\n"); # First we need to strim the PubSub records and remove all the old entries. # Work out the time 25 hours ago (1 hour = 3600 seconds, so 25 hours = 90000 seconds) my $oldestpossibletime = time( ) - 90000; logger ("The oldest allowable subscription cannot have been made earlier than $oldestpossibletime"); # Open the subscriber list created by pubSubListener and stick it in an array. open (PUBSUBLIST, "<$pubsublog"); my @lines = <PUBSUBLIST>; close (PUBSUBLIST); # Clear the subscriber list. unlink ($pubsublog) or ...